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I don't understand how you could possibly think this isn't an argument in favor of the slippery thesis.
Because it's totally normal to have different restrictions for activities in different places. I can drive at 65mph on the freeway, but I can't do that in my neighborhood. Is that an argument in favor of a slippery slope of speed limits being reduced to 25mph on freeways? I can park my car in some places but not others. I can punch people in a martial arts gym but I can't punch random people on the street.
Is the slope slippery in any of these cases? Probably not. More likely, there's a schelling point around which things coalesce, roughly speaking.
It was not that long ago, even more recently than the invention of the automobile, that pedestrians had much freer reign in city centers. Now, pedestrians are restricted to sidewalks and zebra crossings and much of the land in cities is given over to cars. It would be ridiculous for someone in the past to say there's a slippery slope towards pedestrians being banned from cities, despite the fact that their freedom was greatly curtailed and in the US we put up unbelievably ugly freeways in some of the most beautiful parts of our built environment. What ended up happening is that the pendulum swung one way, now it's swinging the other. Streets are getting pedestrianized, some freeways are being torn down or buried. So it goes. Looking at trends beyond the past five years makes it clear that the slippery slope happens to have a slippery incline at the end.
25 mph speed limits in your local area don't lead to 25 mph speed limits on the freeway because there's no mechanism by which the former makes the latter easier, so slippery slopes are only weak ones like "someone who wants to restrict one thing might have more desire to restrict another".
Having computer-controlled cars that phone home makes it easier to have cars that the government can turn off because the computer phoning home is a part of the mechanism that the government would use to turn the car off.
Then by this logic driver's license are a slippery slope to, I dunno, banning Republicans from driving? After all, there's already a mechanism by which the government would prevent Republicans from driving (by not issuing them a license).
If you generalize it a little to "taking away drivers licenses for disfavored things that have nothing to do with driving", yes. They already take drivers licenses away for failure to pay child support.
Why generalize? If the slope is slippery, it's slippery.
Because a slippery slope isn't going to slip to every possible thing in a category all at once. If you're too specific about which thing it slips to, you can endlessly deny that the slippery slope exists. By your reasoning, since you specified Republicans, a slippery slope towards taking away the licenses of Democrats, or people who won't get vaccinated, or people whose names start with the letter A, wouldn't count because it's not exactly the same as the example you gave. That's sophistry.
The substantive part of a slippery slope here is that drivers licenses will be taken away for things with no connection to driving, not specifically Republicans and nothing else. They have indeed slipped like this.
You're basically claiming that the slope is slippery, but it's not actually going to slip towards any particular thing.
Cool, then my response to you is simple. Just as you simply claim that there isn't a slippery slope to Republicans losing their license for being Republicans despite all mechanisms being in place, I will simply claim that there isn't a slippery slope to "taking the wilderness away from us" despite all (hypothetical) mechanisms being (hypothetically) in place. That was easy!
It is slipping towards a category. Many things are in the category. Republicans losing their license is one thing in the category, but not its entirety. You'd also need multiple slippery slopes all failing to get to the point of taking away the licenses of Republicans, but that does not mean that each individual slope isn't real. Republicans would need to be seen as evil enough that it's okay for the law to stop them. Freedom of speech and association would have to end. You could claim something similar for not being allowed to drive into the wilderness, but the principles that would be violated by that are a lot weaker, if they exist at all, than the principles violated by not letting Republicans have licenses.
I'd also expect "taking the wilderness away" to not immediately happen in its full form, while the pot of water with the frog boils over. Self-driving cars could first be limited to not run into protests, or the police could be given discretion to stop them when crimes are involved. Once that's established, the next step might be to keep them out of busy traffic if congestion would be too strong, or some other similar restriction that isn't just "can never go there". Cars may be commandeered by the government to take suspects to the police station, maybe even just for questioning. Police will get warrants to exclude someone from being allowed to have any vehicles go to their house. Cars will be kept out of the wilderness in nighttime hours when, you know, the wilderness isn't patrolled, and away from top-secret government areas. By the time you get to "can't go to the wilderness at all" it'll be a minor step.
This of course can happen for Republicans as well.
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So you're just going to invoke the increasing normalization of the regulation of transport since the 1950s as an argument against that trend continuing into the future...because the trend is just normal? And then argue that the trend is great actually.
None of this makes any sense.
No, I'm invoking the fact that "I can do anything I want anywhere I want" is not a reasonable Schelling point and is not true for any other activity, even activities that you think are not endangered - so the fact that you can't drive in places you could drive before does not, in fact, mean that in the future you won't be able to drive at all, any more than the fact that i can't jaywalk across six lanes of traffic on Market street means that in the future I won't be able to walk around at all.
Where did I say that? I don't really care whether people in Oxbridge need a loicense to drive their cars across town, presumably they are getting the government they deserve. For my part I'm glad I can visit my local downtown area and hang out on the street without car noise and constantly avoiding pedestrians on a three foot wide sidewalk, so sue me. The marginal changes to curtail cars in downtown areas look like a good thing to me, and I see no appetite around me to ban driving in other places, and yes, I acknowledge it would be Bad if you couldn't drive into the wilderness.
Freedom of movement in peacetime is a customary right of Englishmen recognized by countless laws and enshrined even in the Magna Carta.
I agree it's incompatible with modernist government, but the idea that an ancestral tradition that dates back centuries is "not a reasonable Schelling point" is further nonsense.
You're once again conflating "freedom of movement" with "freedom to drive my car anywhere I want, anytime I want". You can't drive your car into my garage, you can't drive your car into a parade, you can't even drive your car on the sidewalk, on the wrong side of the road, when the light is red, or when you're drunk. None of this is an impingement of your freedom of movement.
Bringing up the magna carta is interesting because, when it was written, perhaps 10%-25% of the population were straight up serfs who were literally bound to their master's land. So much for enjoying freedom of movement.
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